


How Could You?

by LostandLonelyBirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Series: Death is But An Illusion [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angry Dick Grayson, Angst, BAMF Dick Grayson, Background Character Death, Bruce Wayne is a Dick, Bruce Wayne is a bad dad sometimes, Bruce Wayne's Grade A Parenting, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Lies and deceit doth a hero not make, Spyral, bc it fucking should have, but I’m going to pretend it did, but it sure as hell will be one now, but not a permanent one, good bye canon, idk if that was a tag before, this did not happen in the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 04:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19143223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/LostandLonelyBirds
Summary: His fingers trace the line of his (dead brother, lost son, Little D) Robin, breath hitched in his chest. Dick feels like he can’t breathe, can’t think, because if Damian is alive….If Damian is alive...Then Bruce lied to him again.





	How Could You?

**Author's Note:**

> So many die  
> With a brush in their hands  
> A heart full of colors  
> and empty pages full of lies  
> -Atticus

_“_ _Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd / Nor Hell a fury, like a [Boy Wonder] scorn'd."_

 _-_ William Congreve, ‘The Mourning Bride’

_‘Robin the Boy Wonder Saves Hostages from the Riddler’s Latest Plot!’_

 

Dick feels nothing as he drops the mug of coffee, hissing slightly as the burning liquid makes contact with his skin. The cup shatters on impact with the floor, shards embedding themselves in his bare feet. Dick ignores the sting in favor of the newspaper clenched tightly in his fist.

 

It was a good shot, he’ll admit.

 

Robin grinning so wide it split his cheeks ( _still round with baby fat_ ), hands on his hips in a cocky stance. Batman, his father, stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder ( _eyes proud, so proud, but not giving away anything with that damned cowl in place_ ).  

 

It reminds him of the pictures and articles he’d amassed during his own run as the Caped Crusader; a pile so large it littered every available surface in his unused Gotham apartment. It had been a monument to their partnership, to the sheer _pride_ he’d felt watching Damian flourish, but it just became a shrine to his failures when Heretic stabbed his baby brother through the stomach.  Another loss, another failed brother, failed friend. He’d burnt it down in a fit of anguish, lighting the entire apartment on fire and sitting on the fire escape as it burned.

 

His fingers trace the line of his ( _ ~~dead brother~~ , ~~lost~~ ~~son~~ , ~~Little D~~_ ~~)~~ Robin, breath hitched in his chest. Dick feels like he can’t breathe, can’t think, because if Damian is alive….

If Damian is alive…

 

“Agent 37?”

 

Helena’s head pokes through the door, brow furrowed. She looks hesitant, questioning. Until her eyes land on the newspaper, widening in apprehension.

But not an ounce of surprise to be found.

 

Dick feels the anger burn its way through his veins, the realisation of what Bruce’s radio silence had actually meant, of what Helena’s constant tension these last couple weeks had been about, slams into him with all the force of a drugged up Bane.

 

His azure eyes narrow, ice cold and burning.

 

“You knew.”

 

It’s not a question.

 

She closes her eyes, almost as if in prayer. Helena enters his room without request and shuts the door behind her with a soft _click_.

 

“I did.”

 

It comes out more honest than she’d have wanted it to, he’s sure.

 

“You knew, you _know_ what he means to me!”

 

He’s shaking, jaw clenched.

Helena straightens, frowning in a way she did on missions when Dick refused to kill. Like he was an idiot, like she knew better.

 

“ _Meant,_ Agent 37. Dick Grayson is dead, as your associates well know.”

 

Her tone is sharp, full of reproach.

 

There’s so much _wrong_ with her statement, and it sounds so close to something Bruce would say he wants to explode.  

 

 _“_ **THE HELL I AM!** _”_

Dick roars, and all he can think of is Bruce, of his impossible request to stay dead, of his own pleading and begging and bargaining, even as he knew it would be hopeless.

 

 Bruce always got his way in the end.

 

 The anger fills him now as it did back then, pain fuelling it like gasoline to a fire.

He wants to throw something, break something. He wants to destroy this room, destroy this place of lies and secrecy, this web of deception he’d built himself on. He wants to set everything on fire, make everything feel how he does ( _burning but hollow, fiery but achingly cold_ ), **watch** as Bruce’s precious mission here burns.

 

He rages on instead.

 

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT! NO FUCKING RIGHT!”

 

And he doesn’t care of the whole school hears him, doesn’t care if he blows his cover to high hell.

 

 She flinches, briefly, and he knows she feels some semblance of guilt buried under her duty to the _goddamn_ mission - But it isn’t enough, not to quell the storm inside him, the fire consuming him.

 

 He’s so _tired_ of being the pawn in these constant games, because even when he dies, everything is still about the _fucking_ mission, like nothing else matters. Like no one else matters, least of all a pawn like him.

 

“He’s a distraction.”

 

“ _He’s my brother.”_

 

It comes out as a hiss, spoken through clenched teeth - feral and dangerous.

 

Dick knows what he’s doing is stupid, idiotic, that he shouldn’t be talking to Helena like she’s Bruce, but he can’t help it. She might as well have been Bruce.

 

Her words twist at something in him, something dark and ugly that he’s been suppressing for so long to be the _golden boy_ , the perfect son. Always selfless, always sacrificing his heart, his soul, just to make Bruce proud. Just to earn a _scrap_ of affection from the man he saw as a second father.

Not anymore.

Fuck that, fuck him.

 

Fuck Bruce and fuck his dirty mission handoffs.

 

Before Dick can blink, he’s throwing everything in sight in a giant duffel bag, movements frantic.

 

He hesitates at his Spyral uniform, at his **gun-**

_what would Bruce think, knowing what he carries?_

Dick grabs it anyways, storing them with his escrima sticks, because _who fucking cares what Bruce thinks, keeping something like that from him._

He makes for the door, but Helena steps in front of him, eyes imploring. Her arms are crossed, and he can already tell she’s trying to take control of the situation, because that’s what she does ( _what **Bruce** does_) but he’s tired and angry and sad all at once, and he just wants to go back to the time before Bruce came back, before he returned to Nightwing, before his freedom became shackled to failure and death and depression.

 

“Where do you think you’re going, Agent?”

 

And he snorts, because if Helena thinks he’ll be staying in this hellhole one minute longer, remaining an agent for this godforsaken organisation for one more second, she’s more out of her mind than the Joker.

 

“To be distracted.”

 

Her hand lands on his shoulder, tightening to the point of pain, and there’s a warning on her face he can read as easily as he can read a book.

 

“You don’t wanna do this Grayson, not to Spyr-“

 

His fist catches her by surprise, knocking her to the floor with its force. He thinks he hears a crack as she falls and can’t find it in himself to feel guilty.

 

  Helena’s clenching her heavily bleeding nose when she gets to her feet, brushing off the pain as a mere annoyance. Dick watches her fingers grasp at her comm, and he decides _to hell with it all_ and pulls a stunt so reckless it would make Jason proud. His fingers dance across the holographic keyboard within his spy watch; unleashing what he’d been planning as a failsafe before Bruce’s _lies of omission_ pushed him to action.

 

 _‘No one can say I’m not always prepared,’_ he thinks to himself bitterly.

 

 

“That just unleashed a virus onto every Spyral server, satellite, and communication relay in the world. By the time it’s done, you won’t have _anything_ on _anyone_. There will be nothing left for Spyral to hide behind.”

 

Her brown eyes narrow, betrayed. She tenses, ready to spring the moment she has an opportunity.

 

Dick won’t give her one.

 

“You’re assuming you’ll get out of here alive, Grayson. You’re still dead to the rest of the world. _We_ are **all** you have.”

 

He throws the newspaper at her, Damian’s smile and Bruce’s hidden expression landing upright. Her words play on repeat in his head - a dull, aching buzz. Dick knows she might be right, knows the family might never forgive him for what he’s done, but….

 

“If you’re all I have, I’d rather have nothing.”

 

 

He sees her kick before she moves, knows what she’ll do before she can even form a plan. It wasn’t so much a fight as it was a beat down, matching her every hit with one of his own. He knew her fighting style, but she didn’t fully know his.

 

He was stronger, he was faster, he had more experience than she could dream of and could quite literally bend himself in half.

 

He’d always held back while here, but not anymore.

 

Dick grabs the leg she’d flung towards his head and uses her own momentum to slam her down on the floor. He spits the blood pooling in his mouth (from her one lucky hit) beside her barely conscious form, grimacing.

 

Helena can barely raise her head to glare at him.

 

“There’s only one person who can call me Grayson, and you didn’t tell me he was alive. Enjoy your fucking life mob princess Bertinelli, I won’t be returning.”

 

Dick feels her shock, that he knows her identity ( _her secret_ ), but he doesn’t care enough to see her face.

 

With the mood he’s in, he might break it.

 

 He hitches the duffel bag up on his shoulder, grabbing his own private comm out of his pocket. Without bothering to read the latest message from Malone, he crushes it beneath his bare heel, relishing in the metallic crunch.

 

He’ll see how Bruce likes not being told important details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [He's Changed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263870) by [RichardGraysonPercyJackson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichardGraysonPercyJackson/pseuds/RichardGraysonPercyJackson)




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